what do you guys think of how i mounted the fan controller knobs for the musashi in the water cooling pipe slots in the case? the knobs are too big to fit in the expansion slots and don't want to have to open the case every time i adjust them. i bought a dremel and thinned the metal on the panels and folded them to make them fit... i would've made them smaller until I realized that using a kitchen sink to dremel down a fan controller doesn't work well in an apartment.

oh, additionally I read that the corsair power supplies haven't been considered SPCR material, however I have to say I don't hear mine at all, to me it's as quiet as the antec CP-850 I have in the other gaming machine I built.

Not true. All the Corsairs built by Seasonic are just as quiet if not quieter than the Seasonic models. But Corsair has some built by Channel Well Technology, which are definitely not as quiet, although the overall technology / build is pretty good. They are intermixed liberally without notice in the Corsair lineup, which is why Corsair gets mixed reviews by SPCR (and SPCR forum members). But you're safe (for noise) with the HX and AX series -- afaik, all of them come from Seasonic.

Aren't the HX750, HX850 and HX1000 made by CWT and lower ones by seasonic ?

Love the build, with a couple of exceptions. First, I like to watch TV on the one single rig I have in the house. My tuner card is PCI-E 1x. Obviously, that slot is blocked by the video card in this build. Are there any other motherboard alternatives other than the 1 Gigabyte that you recommended that would have a PCI-E 1x slot available? Second, I'm not a big fan of wasting the onboard video when you have no intention of ever using it. Is there another mobo option with all the same great fan controls that doesn't have onboard video?

Thanks a lot for this guide, I'm basing my next PC build on it, with some alternative components that was recommended in the article.

Two questions:

Is the single case fan an exhaust fan, i.e. does it blow air out of the case?

If I use an ASUS P8P67 motherboard, do I still need an external fan controller to achieve similar results as in this article, or will its built-in fan control software be sufficient?

Thanks.

1. yes2. it really depends on how the VGA fan is powered... and how quiet you really want to go. The external controller was used only to bring down the fan speed of the Gelid Icy Cooler fans just a notch. If the Zalman fanmate2 was not used, the noise level might have been 1-2 dBA higher -- not much but just enough in my tomb-quiet space to be audible to me. The onboard Asus fan controllers are generally excellent, both in-BIOS and and in Windows. Probably the best out there right now, especially in the new P/H67 boards.

2. it really depends on how the VGA fan is powered... and how quiet you really want to go. The external controller was used only to bring down the fan speed of the Gelid Icy Cooler fans just a notch. If the Zalman fanmate2 was not used, the noise level might have been 1-2 dBA higher -- not much but just enough in my tomb-quiet space to be audible to me. The onboard Asus fan controllers are generally excellent, both in-BIOS and and in Windows. Probably the best out there right now, especially in the new P/H67 boards.

The ASUS motherboard will probably be sufficient for me, then Especially as I'm probably going for the ASUS 6850 DirectCU GPU with its built-in cooler.

I read that the motherboard also sets a minimum Chassis fan speed of 40%. Could this be a problem if I'm going for a Scythe 120mm Slip Stream Fan, 1200rpm as the case fan?

Love the build, with a couple of exceptions. First, I like to watch TV on the one single rig I have in the house. My tuner card is PCI-E 1x. Obviously, that slot is blocked by the video card in this build. Are there any other motherboard alternatives other than the 1 Gigabyte that you recommended that would have a PCI-E 1x slot available? Second, I'm not a big fan of wasting the onboard video when you have no intention of ever using it. Is there another mobo option with all the same great fan controls that doesn't have onboard video?

I'm sure there are many alternatives, but we simply cannot explore them all in the kind of detail needed for these build guides. But you could also just use the bottom PCIe 16x slot.

As for non-IGP boards, the natural alternative to an 890GX board is 890FX -- and you actually pay a price premium for the latter. You also get boards that have more than 2 PCEe 16x slots and so on. AFAIK, the Asus boards have about the best fan controls (for AMD)... so the closest alternative to the GX board used is the ASUS M4A89TD PRO/USB3, which is $20-30 more.

Partly because of this article, I've decided to build my next sandy bridge gaming rig using the antec 900 which I currently own but makes a ton of noise probably from the stock radeon 5850. I'm building a sandy bridge core i5 2500k. The shaman 140 will set me back ~$75. All the stock fans are currently installed on the antec 900 and all running at lowest possible speed (from either bios or 3 level switch).

Was the driving factor behind the 955 chip the cost? Looking at the Sandy Bridge i5s, I wonder how much cooler they'll run at equivalent performance levels, thus allowing reduced fan speeds and lower noise.

On that note, I notice that the cases chosen are optimized for cooling (air flow) and not for silence. To that end, how much of a difference would you expect the modern cases attempting to optimize both? Fractal Design Define series, Lian Li silent chassis, Silver Stone Fortress and Raven series, and Antec P-series cases... all arguably as good as or better than the Nine Hundred and Tempest Evo in terms of air flow, only they also make an effort to do it quietly. With or without some of the common sense case mods (cutting out the exhaust grills to replace with a fan guard for less air resistance, covering unused fans with noise absorbing foam lining a mounting plate, etc.), would this not have a fairly substantial positive impact on overall sound?

Was the driving factor behind the 955 chip the cost? Looking at the Sandy Bridge i5s, I wonder how much cooler they'll run at equivalent performance levels, thus allowing reduced fan speeds and lower noise.

Variety is more interesting -- for readers and for us; that was a main motivation. I doubt very much that noise could have been lowered with SB i5; 14 dBA idle and 17~18 dBA full load are extremely low SPL numbers. You would not hear this as a discrete sound source in a typical room. The overclocked settings saw no rise in noise at idle, but peaks of up to 25~26 dBA at full load, and this might be improved with SB.... but keep in mind that our test load is not the same as a gaming load -- it is substantially higher and, critically, steady state. Games are more dynamic, with power demand fluctuating up and down, which is why even OC'd, the max SPL during gaming rarely hit 20 dBA, which again is still very quiet.

Quote:

On that note, I notice that the cases chosen are optimized for cooling (air flow) and not for silence. To that end, how much of a difference would you expect the modern cases attempting to optimize both? Fractal Design Define series, Lian Li silent chassis, Silver Stone Fortress and Raven series, and Antec P-series cases... all arguably as good as or better than the Nine Hundred and Tempest Evo in terms of air flow, only they also make an effort to do it quietly. With or without some of the common sense case mods (cutting out the exhaust grills to replace with a fan guard for less air resistance, covering unused fans with noise absorbing foam lining a mounting plate, etc.), would this not have a fairly substantial positive impact on overall sound?

Raven & Fortress are not exactly "noise optimized", imo, though both can be used for very quiet systems. But to answer your questions, imo, I don't think those other cases would make this system any quieter, and even if they did have any effect on overall noise, I question whether that difference would be audible or appreciable -- ie, when the noise level is close to or below the room ambient, further improvements are difficult to hear. (Assuming the typical 1m or greater distance between user and PC.) I also think there might be some slight penalty in cooling with most of those cases except the Silverstones. Most of the cases you mentioned are a little pricier, too -- the Antec 900 is a <$100 case. The noise blocking effect of damping foam and thin sheet metal or plastic is modest at best, and any case that has good airflow has big holes which mitigate the sound damping. This is a primary reason for our general recommendation to reduce noise at the source (ie, choose quieter components to start with) rather than trying to suppress the noise after it has already been generated.

An aside: In most case, I actually prefer the sound of fans (and other noise makers) when they are unenclosed, rather than enclosed. Most components are easier to cool, and fan speeds can be totally minimized, making the overall sound extremely low in level and almost entirely broadband. I run a 4-core 3.2 GHz Phenom II HTPC on an open platform (a piece of plywood big enough for all the components) on an open shelf in the stand under my TV, and its single 500rpm 12cm fan is completely inaudible all the time.

Putting noise sources like fans and HDDs into a smallish box does several things:* overall SPL is reduced a bit, maybe 3~6 dBA, but not evenly -- ie, sounds at some frequencies are more reduced.* if sounds at some frequencies fall below audibility, the overall noise becomes less broadband, and the remaining audible noise becomes more tonal (ie, peaky). * the case (enclosure) itself has air resonances, typically <200Hz, and these of combine with the noise of the components (esp. HDDs) to add a throaty bassy FM radio announcer effect.

All of the above makes an unenclosed quiet system quieter for me than that same system enclosed in a case. Of course, unenclosed systems are far less practical.

I've changed all the fan levels in BIOS to 1 the case fans and PSU are very quiet the noisiest part is the stock AMD cooler. I'm looking at replacing this maybe with a Coolermaster 212 for $39. I've recently added a Sapphire Radeon 6870 for $179. It is also pretty quiet. I will probably look at changing its cooler as I do more gaming and overclocking.Overall I am very happy with this build, thanks for the idea!

Hi Mike, thanks for the article - I am building an almost identical rig based on your guide, just a couple of differences due to parts availability. I just have one question - I notice the video card is installed in the x16_1 slot, but the motherboard docs recommend a single card is installed in x16_2. Is it OK to install it to x16_1 like you did? Presume you did this for space reasons!

This is a great guide, I've tried to do something similar by switching to BIOS controlled fans but was not successful. The Gigabyte motherboard BIOS fan speed controls are not very good and the fans still spin too quickly even when temperatures are in line. You're at the mercy of your motherboard BIOS to get this working well and not many review websites take a detailed look at the fan speed settings so you won't know until it's too late. If you use Windows you can use Speedfan but if you switch between operating systems and want to have the same settings you may be out of luck.

I am using the 1,200 RPM Scythe Slipstreams and run them at 5V (~720 RPM) according to SPCR. It's not ideal because my idle noise levels are much higher than the one in this guide (less than 500 RPM fans at idle). What's worse is that during load on a hot day the static 5V that I've set my fans to might not provide sufficient cooling.

Barring purchasing a new motherboard I'm not sure what I could do, maybe use lower speed fans like the 800 RPM Slipstreams?

A solution that works with Gigabyte motherboards is to use the Scythe 120mm Slipstream Adjustable PWM fan SY1225SL2HPVC. This has a control which allows you to set the PWM fan speed range on a continous scale from 470-1340 rpm to 740-1900 rpm. So what you can do is to dial whatever idle speed you require, and leave the PWM automatic control to take account of increased CPU temps caused by system loading and/or ambient temperature. Set to the minimum range, idle speeds down to around 400/500 rpm should be achievable in practice, effectively silent.

A solution that works with Gigabyte motherboards is to use the Scythe 120mm Slipstream Adjustable PWM fan SY1225SL2HPVC. This has a control which allows you to set the PWM fan speed range on a continous scale from 470-1340 rpm to 740-1900 rpm. So what you can do is to dial whatever idle speed you require, and leave the PWM automatic control to take account of increased CPU temps caused by system loading and/or ambient temperature. Set to the minimum range, idle speeds down to around 400/500 rpm should be achievable in practice, effectively silent.

The advantage of this solution is that it is a pure hardware/motherboard PWM solution, no software is involved, so it will work equally well with Windows or non-Windows operating systems.

Oh that's a really interesting fan. It looks like a Sunbeam Rheosmart PCI but the knob also adjusts the voltage when in PWM mode. The Rheosmart can only switch between the two.

It seems the speed of the fan is pretty high though. I think I'd use it on the lowest setting most of the time and the Scythe Kama would have very similar performance wouldn't it?According to SPCR the speed is 310-1200.

The current Scythe 120mm Kama PWM fan is the SA1225FDB12H-P which has a 300-1600 range. So, yes it's worth considering. As noted in the SPCR review, if you set the adjustable PWM fan toward the higher end of the range then it can become somewhat noisy at maximum revs. For this reason I used the adjustable PWM fans in pairs with a PWM splitter cable, as a CPU plus exhaust combo. Set to the low range this helped restrict maximum fan speeds under high stress/high temperature conditions, normally to around 1000/1100 rpm. The splitter cables can be sophisticated such as those made by Akasa or just a simple Y cable. Using PWM fans as a chain of two or even three in this way is a fairly common practice, see for example http://www.amazon.com/Scythe-Kama-Flex-120mm-SA1225FDB12H-P/product-reviews/B0045EYIQE.

The current Scythe 120mm Kama PWM fan is the SA1225FDB12H-P which has a 300-1600 range. So, yes it's worth considering. As noted in the SPCR review, if you set the adjustable PWM fan toward the higher end of the range then it can become somewhat noisy at maximum revs. For this reason I used the adjustable PWM fans in pairs with a PWM splitter cable, as a CPU plus exhaust combo. Set to the low range this helped restrict maximum fan speeds under high stress/high temperature conditions, normally to around 1000/1100 rpm. The splitter cables can be sophisticated such as those made by Akasa or just a simple Y cable. Using PWM fans as a chain of two or even three in this way is a fairly common practice, see for example http://www.amazon.com/Scythe-Kama-Flex-120mm-SA1225FDB12H-P/product-reviews/B0045EYIQE.

Thanks for the information, very interesting stuff! I need to control 4 fans (2 CPU, 1 GPU, 1 exhaust). I see the splitters you're talking about such as this Rosewill one:

I'm still a bit confused about how you have it hooked up though. Do you use two adjustable PWM fans that are hooked up to a splitter cable which is then hooked up to the motherboard? Does that mean you have two PCI brackets (one for each fan)? It would be nice to have a solution where the splitter had a dial as well so that the range could be limited on all fans without having to have multiple PCI brackets.

If you look at the image gallery for the Rosewill 12" PWM Splitter Model RCW-FPS-401 on newegg there is a graphic showing that all the cables are labelled as to where they go. How it works is that one cable goes to the CPU PWM fan header on the motherboard and takes the PWM control signal only from there. So all the fans on the chain get the same control signal. Power for the fans is drawn from the PSU by a separate cable and distributed to all the fans on the chain. It means there is no risk of pulling too much power from the motherboard header if the splitter has the maximum of three fans on it.

The adjustable PWM fans can be used on a chain with the Rosewill splitter. As each fan can be adjusted separately, it is possible for example to set the exhaust fan to run slightly faster than the CPU fan, or any other configuration you choose. Set against this flexibility, the potential downside of the Scythe adjustable PWM is that each fan has its own control and needs its own PCI slot. If you have the skill and facilities to solder fan wires then this could be improved on. The controls and control knobs are removable; again if you have case modding capabilities you could relocate the controls and/or create a master control.

Ok I've done some more research and I don't think there's a good way to switch unless I purchase a new motherboard with better BIOS profiles. The fan setting on my Gigabyte is very basic and I confirmed that it is 28% speed at 20C and scales linearly to 100% speed at 66C. It's not like the Asus used in this article's build where a Silent profile could be set that lowers the initial speed and makes the curve quieter.

I ran Prime95 and found that at full load the CPU temperature topped out at about 65C and at idle the temperature is around 41C. I have my current fans spin at around ~720 RPM constantly.

Since I already have non PWM fans for cooling there are two options I can take to switch to a PWM solution. First is to use existing fans and purchase a Sunbeam Rheosmart fan controller which takes the PWM signal and controls normal fans using it. At first I thought this was a viable solution. However I found a site with a chart mapping PWM % to voltages and it's a bit too linear and steep. The lowest PWM % that this motherboard is capable of is 28% and according to this chart it is already 6.5V! That's at 20C which is not really realistic even at idle for my setup.

The other option is to swap the fans with PWM fans such as the SlipStream Adjustable at 470-1340 or the Scythe Kama 300-1600. If you do the math on the linear scaling for the Gigabyte BIOS PWM setting you'll see that at 41C it will set PWM at roughly 60%. Now I'm not exactly sure how to calculate actual fan speeds but let's say it's just the maximum RPM multiplied by the PWM % so that gives 1340 * 60% = ~804 RPM and 1600 * 60% = ~960 RPM.

Those RPMs are pretty high for idle. Now obviously these are very rough ballpark numbers because the temperatures are going to be different with the faster spinning fans. I think it's enough to illustrate that the available PWM BIOS setting is too aggressive to work well though.

Please let me know if my math is wrong here. Thanks.

EDIT: Maybe the Zalman PWM Mate Fan controller can help. It looks like you can have the fans controlled by PWM and then further reduce those speeds by setting the controller to medium or low. I haven't seen any reviews on it so I'm not sure exactly how it works.

Bearing in mind that most cases come with at least one fan, it would be normal to leave them in place or redeploy them for purposes such as intakes (to provide cooling for hard drives for example) where a fixed fan speed is perfectly OK. The PWM fan chain can then be limited to the CPU cooler and exhaust.

The Zalman PWM Mate was reviewed by SPCR as part of the Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU cooler review. It is part of the Extreme CPU package, and actually fits on the CPU cooler itself. Functionally it is the same as the retail version of the PWM Mate, but the retail version comes with a cable. See here for details http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=375. I would assume that you could use a PWM Y connector to control two fans if required.

Like the rotary resistance control of the Scythe adjustable fans, the PMW Mate works by reducing the voltage in the supply line to the fan. In the case of the Scythe adjustable the range, based on the data from the SPCR Ninja 3 and Yasya review, is around 7V at the low range to 12V at the top range. The details for the PWM Mate are here, in the table headed 'Fan Controller modes' http://www.silentpcreview.com/article956-page5.html. As you can see, there are three fixed settings, and a variable setting. The variable setting voltage range on the PWM Mate is similar to the Scythe adjustable, but the fan speed figures are elevated because the Extreme is fitted with a much higher speed fan.

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